It’s amazing how many people have heard about the permaculture forest garden project and what we are trying to do here! I recently spoke to a beekeeper called Orlando, who heard about our project through an email that had been passed on by several other people. Orlando has several hives at 2 other community gardens in London and has asked if we would be interested in keeping bees in the garden. Strangely enough, we had been talking about bee keeping before Christmas but couldn’t really see how to get into it.

We’ve agreed with Orlando that in April we’ll start with 3 hives in the garden with a view to having more the following year if they are successful. Most people (myself included until recently!) don’t realise that you can actually keep bees and make honey in the city. Apparently, city honey can have some unusual flavours because of the sheer diversity of plants available to the bees. Orlando left with me a sample pot from one of his hives in Brixham – an unlikely place for honey production you might think but it is absolutely delicious! I’m really looking forward to learning more about bees and how to keep them. What a great way to encourage biodiversity in the garden!